


The Devil's Party

by sevenofspade



Category: Lucifer (Comic)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:08:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5446037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevenofspade/pseuds/sevenofspade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer returns from the Void in Hell. Lucifer returns from the Void in LA. Both these things are true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil's Party

**Author's Note:**

  * For [monicawoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/monicawoe/gifts).



> I hope you enjoy this! I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> It's canon-compliant up to the end of Mike Carey's run.

In the Hell of the Lady Lys, there was trouble a-brewing. She was therefore unsurprised when the angel Duma drifted down from above to land on her balcony.

He wished to talk, as much as he ever did.

"Yes," Lys said, "I am aware. But what can they do? Hell is mine, the Key is yours and Mazikeen is the Morningstar. If this Lucifer is even the real thing, there is nothing he can do, nor would he want to."

Duma sighed.

"She?" Lys was surprised -- not unduly, for notions of sex and gender concerning angels were more academical than anything -- but she did not agree with the rest of Duma's points. "Real or not, Mazikeen must never know. She would tear an impostor apart and do far worse to the real thing."

Duma nodded.

"I'll deal with Mazikeen, then," Lys said.

Duma left.

*

Rachel Begai had a problem. There was a man playing the piano in her ba; her problem was threefold.

Problem 1: This bar didn't have a piano.  
Problem 2: The man playing was the bar's former owner.  
Problem 3: He was the Devil, Lucifer himself in a fancy coat and formal dress.

"What the _hell_ are you doing here?" Rachel shouted and hoped none of the bar's employees were in yet.

"My presence here has nothing to do with Hell," Lucifer said. Trust him to take an expletive literally.

Trust him to take everything literally. Rachel had never heard him say anything that wasn't true on some level.

"Why are you here, then?" She crossed her arms, poor armour against him, but if he'd wanted her dead, she would have been already.

"The end of the worlds is coming," he said, just like that, calm as you please and the first few bars of Ride of the Valkyries under his fingers.

"I thought you fixed that," Rachel said and, because he was Lucifer and she still hated him, even with Paul back, she added, "And here I thought you prided yourself on doing your job properly."

For a moment his eyes burned and she knew that, Morningstar no longer or not, he was still made solely of pride, independence and stubborn will. Then he played another piece of classical music -- too many chords for his single hand on the keys -- and said, "This is an apocalypse of a rather different sort and scale."

"How very reassuring," Rachel said.

"It is not meant to be."

There were many things Rachel could say to that, but she said none of them. She was not about to let herself get dragged into more mindgames.

"You're not getting the bar back."

"No? And why is that?" He stood. It wasn't anything as crude as intimidation, merely a reminder of who he was.

"Because you're not taking anything more from me and if you want it, you're going to have to take it," she said.

*

Somewhere deep inside every atom of the world, Elaine stirred.

There was something requiring her attention, but it was a long, long way from omnipresence to corporeal form. It would keep until she was ready for it.

*

Lys had had every intention of keeping the possible return of Lucifer from Mazikeen, but Mazikeen had already been informed. Elokim Shaher, it appeared, had overheard plotting in Effrul and Gly to put Lucifer back on the throne of Hell.

History was repeating itself and so Lys found it unlikely this Lucifer would take more kindly to the suggestion that the other.

Lys used her fan to push Mazikeen's blade away from her throat.

"Take me to him," Mazikeen said.

Í

"Her, I'm told," Lys replied.

Mazikeen's expression didn't change one iota and remained a fierce scowl all through the carriage ride to where the angel had said the former Lightbringer was holed up. In fact, if anything, the scowl was steadily deepening as the carriage drew closer. When Mazikeen saw Duma, it lightened from the murderous grimace it had grown into to revert to the merely thunderous it had been when she'd had her sword at Lys' throat.

Duma gave Lys a disappointed look.

"Oh, hush." She patted his shoulder. "She knew already."

He looked at Mazikeen crossing the threshold of the building he was standing in front of.

"We may be ruling Hell as a triumvirate, but I'm not standing in the way of the Morningstar," Lys said. "And I notice you're not, either."

Duma walked in. Lys snorted and followed.

At first, Lys thought the impostor was a pathetic failure. She looked nothing like Lucifer; if his hair had been the colour of the brightest flame, hers was the colour of the deepest shadow. Everything else was much the same way, a reflection of the former Morningstar, but through a glass, darkly.

Then the Lucifer raised her head to see them enter and the eyes -- the eyes were the same.

Even the heart of a sun would pale before those yellow eyes, pupils slit like a venomous snake's. Lys found she couldn't remember if this was what Lord Lucifer's eyes had looked like this, but they must have. Those were Lucifer's eyes, there was no mistaking it.

Mazikeen spun into action, her blade swinging where the Lucifer's face had just been. Lucifer dodged. Mazikeen did not slow.

Lys leaned against the wall and watched the Morningstars, former and current, duke it out. As the fight went on, it occurred to her that it was singularly one-sided.

She raised an eyebrow at Duma.

He nodded.

She smiled.

"Maz," Lys said and took a pre-emptive step back. "Perhaps we can talk this out."

"No," Mazikeen said.

"I've no wish to unseat your Triumvirate," Lucifer said, rather more slices in the white jacket over her black shirt than there had been even moments ago.

"It is not even remotely about that," Mazikeen said, but at least she lowered her sword, if only an inch.

Lys was about to suggest they discuss this calmly, preferably while sitting down and with a nice glass of wine, but Mazikeen was on the attack again. Duma, not being Hellkin, stepped forward in the path of the Morningstar.

Mazikeen stopped her assault. "Step aside, Duma. That thing is not Lucifer."

"What else could I be?"

"I don't know. But Lucifer is in Los Angeles, at Lux." Mazikeen's sword did not waver, but neither did Duma step aside.

"I had rather considered myself the authority on my own whereabouts," Lucifer said.

"At present, I trust Beatrice more than you," Mazikeen said.

It was likely Lys' imagination, but it seemed to her Lucifer twitched at the mention of Mazikeen's mortal lover.

*

"Perhaps she is mistaken rather than lying," Lucifer's voice said from inside the Hell -- palace? tower? thing.

Rachel looked again at Lucifer, who'd dragged her into yet another fucking roadtrip, because it was that or leave him alone with Beatrice and no. His mouth was resolutely closed over the entire last half of that sentence.

"One of you was bad enough," Rachel said. 

If Lucifer did anything as mundane as sneering, that would be what he was doing right then. Instead, his face remained neutral, but the sneer hung around the edges of his shape.

"You do not know of what you speak, Rachel Begai," he said.

"If it were up to me, I would be well rid of your games of gods and monsters," she replied. He might be called "The Father of Lies" but she'd never heard him say one and he had told her Ragnarok was coming. The fate of the worlds quite literally hung in the balance.

They'd reached the doorway while they were speaking. Standing just inside were a woman with blue skin and an angel.

"Duma," Lucifer said to the angel. "Lady Lys."

Lys smiled. "Lord Lucifer. This is altogether unexpected."

Duma nodded towards the inside. As Rachel's eyes got used to the dark, she could see a woman with half a face and a woman in a white suit with Lucifer's eyes.

"Oh no," Beatrice said. Rachel did not think anyone but her heard. Certainly no one reacted.

"There is another Lucifer." Either one of them could have said that.

Duma looked between the two.

"No," Lucifer said. "From this Creation." This time, there was no doubt that both of them had spoken, their voices perfectly the same.

That and the eyes were the only thing they had in common. Otherwise they were inverse reflections of each other.

"Come on," Rachel told Beatrice. "Let's leave while they're distracted." Rachel was going to solve this Ragnarok thing her own damn self, was what she was going to do.

"An explanation seems in order," Lys said. "Perhaps with wine?"

On those last words, she clapped her hands and suddenly and chairs wine were brought. Rachel nearly jumped out of her skin. Where the hell where those servants coming from?

Well, yes, Hell, but how did she not notice them before? It was Lucifer's fault, she decided. He tended to bend the fabric of reality so all eyes were on him, and now there were two of them and Mazikeen as the Morningstar besides. No wonder Rachel wasn't noticing anything or anyone else; it was like trying to pull away from a black hole.

Rachel sat down and found herself seated between Beatrice and the angel, who smiled at her reassuringly. She showed him her teeth in reply. Where were the angels when Lucifer lost her her first chance at her brother?

Nowhere.

And Lucifer had been an angel once, hadn't he? Which told you all you needed to know about angels, really.

"Why are you here?" Mazikeen was not sitting.

Lucifer -- the one who'd brought Rachel and poor Beatrice here -- said, "I made a promise to Loki to hold him high come Ragnarok day. I intend to fulfil it."

Duma had to go and restrain Mazikeen, at that.

"You would not stay for me, but you would return for Loki?" It was a terrible thing, her rage.

His rage was terrible as well, but it lacked the fire in hers. Even the angel had taken a step back this time.

"Mazikeen. Stop."

*

Elaine had chosen to incarnate near the plains of Effrul. Here her uncle was and the Morningstar besides. There were others present as well, but they were tangential to the issue.

Not unimportant, because if being God had taught Elaine anything it was that no one was unimportant, but tangential to this particular issue.

There was Lucifer and... Elaine tilted her head. Also Lucifer, yet not. This one was not from her Creation; it was not her name written on every atom. But then, it was not her name on every atom of her uncle, either.

"Elaine," Mazikeen said. Her tone was carefully neutral, in sharp contrast to Lys' seemingly delighted "Lady Elaine! What a pleasant surprise."

"This is unexpected," Elaine said, gesturing at the Lucifers.

"Quite," said the one who had pulled her out of someone else's death, all those years ago now.

The other was silent.

"I could resolve this," Elaine said, careful to keep her consciousness within the bounds of her skin, "but I would have to Look."

Both Lucifers drew back at once. " **No**."

Privately, Elaine smiled. Her uncle really had not changed at all, despite all his efforts to the contrary. She did not know if that made him triumph or tragedy, but it made him _him_.

"Then I suppose we'll have to resolve this mystery another way," Elaine said.

"A duel," said the black-haired Lucifer. "A battle to the death, with the victor the sole Lucifer or both returned to the nothing from whence we came."

"Let's not take any drastic measures," Elaine countered. That was a far more violent suggestion than she'd expected even a dark mirror of her uncle to make.

Elaine expanded her vision of the scene. There were Lys and Duma, standing to the side, each with a hand on one of Mazikeen's arms. There were the hellkin in Lys' service. There were the intriguants aiming to put Lucifer -- either one, they were not picky -- on the throne of Hell. There was Rachel Begai, who wanted no part of these proceedings, and there was Beatrice Wechsler, her hand half-raised as though about to ask a question in school.

"Beatrice," Elaine said. It had the benefit of surprising everyone, including Beatrice herself.

"Ms God," Beatrice said.

"Call me Elaine."

"Ms Elaine, I think I know who she is." Beatrice gestured at the black-haired Lucifer.

"By all means, tell us."

Beatrice traced symbols on her face and Elaine could see the shadow of blood in the wake of her fingers.

"There was another Lucifer before," Beatrice started. "When we were in heaven?"

Mazikeen nodded. "I remember. When the Titans thought to set themselves up as God, they made a shadow of my lord to kill him."

"I remember," said Lucifer, the one with hair the colour of a dying sun and eyes like stars being born. "I sent it into the nothing beyond Creation ahead of me."

"Anyone else want to remember anything?" said the Lucifer with hair the colour of a black hole's hungry dark. Her voice was as poisonous as venom dripping from a snake's fangs.

"No," Elaine said, careful not to make it into a compulsion -- it would not do to turn everyone here into wilful amnesiacs. She herself remembered this not at all, but that had been before she had taken her grandfather's place as lynchpin of Creation. 

"Good." Lucifer's shadow smiled with teeth aplenty.

Elaine touched the edges of Beatrice's mind, as gently as she could, to see the scene for herself.

Elaine stepped forward at put a hand on each of the Lucifers. They let her, mostly out of surprise. "You were both in the Void. You," she patted her uncle's arm, "were trying to become something other than what you are and got rid of pieces of yourself in the process."

"Yes," Lucifer said.

"And you were in the Void, waiting to become one with him, so you absorbed the parts of him he was getting rid of," Elaine said.

"Doesn't make me Lucifer any less than he is. More, by volume."

"I see," Elaine said and she did. "You do not wish to be Lucifer and _you_ do."

"No."

"No?" It was Lucifer who spoke, before Elaine did.

"I do not wish to be Lucifer, much less a pale shadow of his. I wish to be myself, even if it destroys me."

Lucifer smiled. He smiled like a snake with an apple might have smiled, in a garden in another Creation. It was perhaps as close to kind as Lucifer's smiles ever got.

"I will not make you be anything you do not choose to be," Lucifer said -- as if, Elaine thought, it was his promise to make. "I will not harm you if you do not try to harm me first."

"How many others did you make this promise to? How many living still?"

Elaine was not letting this situation escalate. "What's your name? If you're not Lucifer, who are you?"

There was a great silence.

Finally, Beatrice spoke.

"Lucifer's Latin for Lightbringer, right?" she said. 

Duma nodded.

"And what, I should call myself the Bringer of Darkness? No shadow of Lucifer am I." A pause. She shoved her hands in her pockets aggressively. "I'm going to be Nick."

"An odd choice," Lucifer said.

"Nobody asked _you_ ," Nick said. She kicked out and the fabric of reality warped, until a gate leading to _Lux_ stood. "Come on, let's ditch this place."

*

Once the mortal women had followed the Bringer of Darkness out of Hell, Lys turned to Lucifer.

"'Ditch'?" she asked.

"She and I are nothing alike," Lucifer replied. He was not making any particular effort to hide his wounded pride; had he still been the Morningstar, Lys would have shaken with fear -- Lucifer's pride always was the most dangerous part of him -- but he was not and she did not.

She might have laughed, instead, but Duma stepped forward.

"There are still some who wish to re-enthrone you as King of Hell," Lys told Lucifer. "It would be best if you... _discouraged_ them."

Lucifer looked to Mazikeen.

"Leave," Mazikeen said. "Perhaps when you return we will talk, or perhaps I will end you."

Lucifer left.

*

Rachel and Beatrice had followed not-Lucifer-more-like-Lucifer's-opposite-reflection-call-me-Nick back to Lux.

The piano was on fire.

"I still own this place, Rachel said. "If it burns down, you better provide compensation."

"I've no intent to burn this place down," Nick said. She sat down; by a trick of the light, she now looked both very very old and oh so very young. "I'm just not going to play that fucking piano. That's _his_ thing."

"It was his bar," Rachel said. "If you don't want to be like him, maybe you should leave."

"No."

"So you're going to let him define you, is that it?" Rachel finished watching the piano burn. 

"No. That's why I'm not leaving. If I define myself as his opposite, I'm still letting him define me," Nick said. She waved a hand and the piano's ash was gone. Neat.

"If you're staying, you need to learn how to make drinks," Rachel said. "And I need to drink every single one."

"Me too," Beatrice said.

*

Elaine and Lucifer stood alone in the Void, right outside Creation. The term 'floated' might have been more appropriate, but 'stood' better conveyed how they held themselves. 

"Is this goodbye, then?" Elaine asked.

"Not quite yet," Lucifer said. "I do still owe Loki a promise."

Mazikeen too, Elaine knew, but neither of them had told her about it, so she pretended she didn't know. He was not fooled, but he did not call her out.

"You can tell Loki his Ragnarok is cancelled," Elaine said. "You and I can have uncle-niece bonding time instead."

And they did. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the following quote "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels & God, and at liberty when of Devils & Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it."


End file.
